Age and lack of GUI is the least problem, but I may be prejudiced against Microsoft. Especially when it comes to the past. Still, it may still be the right tool for the job. As far as the user-facing part is concerned, I really wish there was nicer interplay between CLIs and GUIs. Sometimes, text is...

FVWM certainly can.I love how you can add the nice tricks of more "modern" interfaces and leave out what annoys you, and add your own quirks (for example: mouse gestures for predifined window positions, exchange window positions by midclick-dragging one over the other).

I find Linux Libertine and Biolinum a useful pair. Libertine is an understated transitional typeface, with a matching display variant (lighter and higher contrast between thick and thin strokes, meant to look more refined at large sizes; it'd be busy and anaemic in body text). Biolinum is the intere...

Text fonts aren't as immediately recognisable, but my strongest attitudes towards typography are misgivings about about misused fonts for text. Some examples: Apple likes to use Helvetica as a workhorse. Its straight parts end at right angles, curves are samey when there would normally be variations...

Regarding font rendering of different OSes: OSX attempts to be faithful to the typeface, and leaves colour/boldness and shapes relatively intact. If they don't fit into the pixel grid, things may become blurry and Look Like Arse on low-resolution displays, but you can get a good idea of how it would...

I don't see a big effect on throughput either way - if walking takes up twice the space but finishes in half the time, it has no effect. It'd be smoother and more convenient if everyone could agree to one thing. My preference would be for walking, but I wouldn't complain about the inconsiderate lazy...

I'm not keen on reheating stuff... takes any joy out of food preparation, and any food that doesn't become nasty when reheated is probably not very healthy to begin with. But that's not really the problem. Biggest rule imo is "don't eat crud". Well, don't make a habit of it - occasional cr...

There are some similarities between Jobs and Edison:Great business-oriented vison, can be credited for making exciting new tech commonplace, liked to overstate their creative genius, ham-fisted in their offensive use of patents.

Knoppix, Puppy and a few others are specifically set up to work well straight off the CD for common needs, without further setup. Copy to RAM and the speed penalty applies only to the boot process... and even that's still tolerable. Is this comfortable for your everyday OS? Not really, but good enou...

I have certain expectation of free software - ideally, it's open-ended, modular, expandable, repurposable. Deliberately made useful for downstream projects. Canonical makes their creations available under a liberal license, one can theoretically re-use it... but there's a difference between "so...

Debian is a large community project focused on its "Stable" branch - sensible if conservative with a long release cycle, "done when it's done". Quite user-friendly (automagical configuration whereever that makes sense, user review for potentially problematic things) and little sh...

If there were spiders around big enough to eat them without too much fuss, I would give them a try. A lot of it is mostly familiarity - strawberries are very weird with their strange plasticky sheen, seeds sticking out and irregular shapes. Food considered a delicacy by some but abhorred by others i...

I'm a little concerned about Canonical pushing their own tech. Sometimes it feels like this: "Unless you want to double your work, you have to decide whether you want to support Ubuntu or generic Linux. We're the one with a defined leadership you can talk to and the corporate partnerships consu...

Gamers may have other needs than other demanding users. A good typing keyboard may have nice clicky/springy keyswitches that have a clear actuation point to give you proper feedback. Those can feel off when you're gaming and keeping keys pressed. Quality gaming keyboards often use very smooth, const...

As I understood it:Someone got themselves a nice shiny fruit juicer, possibly with the intention of living healthier, more natural or some other hippie claptrap.Only... they they prefer "juicing" heavily processed junk that is almost, but not entirely, unlike fruit.

Generally, free software is different in flavour from proprietary software:concerned about correctness and the ability to be twerked and repurposed, rather than about a polished user experience as-is. Canonical is embracing virtues, follies and dickeries of proprietary software, which gets free soft...

The effort isn't so enormous... the main problem is the same as in choosing a Linux distro: Tons of options, most differences are neglegible to most people. Some want low-level control, others think the whole point of a tiling WM is that you don't have to configure anything. Awesome and Openbox with...

That's what I meant, but total size may play into it. I don't want to scan in two axes, so above a certain size I'd want my screen to get wider but not taller. For a desktop, a ludicrously wide screen seems like an attractive alternative to multiple monitors. Somewhat related, usage habits play into...

I try to use up my food and mostly avoid the need for detergents in the first place. "Normal" washing up seems wasteful and yucky. A pan is rarely ever dirty... it may just contain the base for a yummy sauce. Most common "cleaning" agents: bread, cheap wine, sometimes assisted by...

I don't like XFCE... I find it dull. Coming from a highly twerked FVWM, I find most environments dull. However: XFCE is sensible, distro-agnostic, modular, freedesktop-compliant, gives more to the open source ecosystem than it takes and seems to have a sustainable development path. Mate by compariso...

Falls falt, feels as if written by someone tech-ignorant. What happens in a user account is that user's responsibility. What may cause trouble for other users, like installing potentially buggy drivers, requires admin privileges. How big potential troubles are doesn't enter the picture, just whom th...

Sort of. Main difference in approach to the desktop environment: Ubuntu reinvents the wheel for questionable reasons, Mint reinvents the wheel for no reason at all - their creations don't really do much for user experience that a slick XFCE implementation couldn't do more efficiently and with fewer ...

Ubuntu uses Debian Unstable snapshots and does more risky stuff with it, so Debian Unstable shouldn't scare you. However, it's part of a testing process rather than a first-class citizen in Debian's development. Derivatives like Aptosid and Siduction add a little polish. I've had better experiences ...

Regarding "obscure" minority opinions: It's worth noting whether those opinions are less obscure among groups who should know better than the general population (Hard to define. Relevant formal education probably qualifies; positive correlation with intelligence, level of general education...